Michigan House panel gets PFAS 101 from Snyder team

Updated Dec 5, 2018; Posted Dec 5, 2018

A Feb. 25, 2018 photo of a pollution monitoring well on the former Wolverine Worldwide leather tannery grounds in Rockford, Mich. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating soil and groundwater pollution on the property where the century-old manufacturing complex was demolished in 2010. (Garret Ellison | MLive)

LANSING, MI — A Michigan House committee received what the chair termed a “PFAS 101” lesson from several state officials, who cycled through a basic overview of state actions to address contamination during a hearing that did not consider any actual legislation.

Top officials in the Snyder Administration spent an hour on Wednesday, Dec. 5, giving what amounted to a briefing session for the House Natural Resources Committee. The testimony was heavy on highlights from the past year on their PFAS response.

The room was packed and attendees were forced to stand or watch from an overflow room. Although members of the public attended hoping to speak, none were able to.

When it came time for questions — about five minutes before committee recess — Democrats objected to the limited nature of the briefing, their exclusion from questioning, and sought a commitment from chair Gary Howell, R-Lapeer, to revisit the issue next week.

Afterwards, Howell said he’ll be “delving into this much deeper in the long term” and the committee needs more information before it’s ready to hear legislation.

“I want everybody to have the same basic information and hear it simultaneously. I’m trying to get to basic information so if we do legislation, it’ll be intelligently thought out and scientifically-based,” Howell said. Because of the “intense numbers of bills pending” in lame duck, he said now is a bad time to deal with an issue that needs to be carefully thought out.

“I’m looking at the beginning of next term and next month,” he said.

Howell said he’d “absolutely” hear testimony beyond that from state officials. “We’ll be dealing with a lot of people before this is over.”

Cathy Wusterbarth, who co-leads the NOW (Need Our Water) activist group based in Oscoda, said she was told beforehand that public could offer testimony if there was time. When she saw the agenda, which included several bills not related to PFAS in addition to the informational session, she realized that probably wasn’t going to happen.

She was disappointed at the depth of information presented.

“They were starting from scratch,” Wusterbarth said. “I would think they’d do a little bit of homework beforehand to know what PFAS was.”

One of those members was Rick Rediske, an environmental chemist at the Grand Valley State University Annis Water Resources Institute, who was told expert testimony slots were full but there would be opportunity to testify next week, Birkbeck said.

“We didn’t come today based on our reliance on what they told us,” said Birkbeck.

Bill Sowerby, D-Clinton Township, ranking minority on the committee, said he was “absolutely not” satisfied with the testimony.

“The issue here is about full transparency and the ability to ask the tough questions of the departments that are directly involved in this,” Sowerby said. “Myself and my Democratic colleagues have been asking for hearings in full transparency on this issue. We’ve been ignored. This was the first chance we’ve had to really dive into serious questions and get serious answers. We were ignore today in having the chance to do that.”

Sowerby said he wants to question the Snyder team in a public setting to get at “what they knew, when they knew it, why they didn’t they inform the public when they knew it.”

Other questions he has: “How are they going to fix this problem? Why is the 70-ppt the accepted level? Should we be looking at a lower level for the safety of the public? What is the science and research showing? It isn’t just what’s happening here in in Michigan, it’s happening across the country. There’s other science and research that can be examined as well.”